Professor Tara Fenwick

Emeritus Professor

Education University of Stirling, Stirling, FK9 4LA

Professor Tara Fenwick

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About me

My research has focused on professional work and learning in practice, professional/interprofessional education, and issues of professionalism and responsibility. I retired in August 2016 and am now living in Canada.I work with various approaches that some call ‘sociomaterial’, foregrounding the materiality of work practices, knowing, politics and subjectivities. 

From 2010 I was Director of ProPEL, an international network for research in professional practice, education and learning: www.propel.stir.ac.uk . ProPEL's remit, now under new leadership at the University of Stirling since my retirement, remains broad and interdisciplinary: (1) to promote innovative studies of professional knowledge, practices and learning across domains such as health care, management, policing, medicine, social care and education; and (2) to explore effective new approaches to support professional learning across contexts of higher education, workplace and community.My recent books include: 

Revisiting actor-network theory in education(with R Edwards Routledge forthcoming 2017) Professional responsibility and professionalism: A sociomaterial examination (Routledge 2016) Reconceptualising professional learning: sociomaterial knowledges and practices (with M. Nerland,  Routledge 2014) Governing knowledge: comparison, knowledge-based technologies and expertise in the regulation of education (with E Mangez, J Ozga, Routledge 2013) Materialities, textures, pedagogies (with P Landri, Routledge 2013) Emerging approaches in education research: tracing the sociomaterial (with R Edwards and P Sawchuk, Routledge 2012) Knowledge mobilization: politics, languages and responsibilities (with L Farrell, Routledge 2012) Actor network theory in education (with R Edwards, Routledge 2010),

Doctoral SupervisionsI have recently supervised students who explored questions of knowledge production and everyday practices in changing work organisations, new technologies in professional practice and education, equity and politics in workplace education and learning, boundaryless professionals, social responsibility and ethics in professional practice, gendered conditions of work, and workplace literacy.